Margherita Pizza, Motorino Napoletana, East Village, NYC
After a wacky morning of art (or perhaps, more accurately - a morning of wacky art, e.g., the Marina Abramovich exhibit) at the MoMa, we needed something substantial but light to quell our intense hunger before dinner. Enter the magic of the neapolitan pizza. I’ve always been a fan of Grimaldi’s and Lombardi’s, but those were much too far away (Brooklyn and SoHo, respectively). Luckily, I remembered Rebecca’s suggestion to check out Motorino, recently acknowledged by the NYTimes’ Sam Sifton for serving the best pizza in New York City.
When evaluating neapolitan-style pizza, the Margherita serves as the ultimate benchmark. The colors of the Italian flag - red, green, and white - signal the pizza’s fidelity to simple integrity. Motorino’s version did not disappoint, well-balanced in its proportions of buffalo mozzarella and tomato sauce (though I do tend to like more basil). Each bite of the crust makes you realize how truly wonderful the act of chewing can be - pliant resistance punctuated by a slight charred flavor from the wood burning oven.
We also tried the seasonal Brussels Sprout pizza, which Sifton described as “something from a magic act, a dog speaking BBC English. It is great and unsettling, far better than imagination would dictate.” Now, after that kind of hyperbole you might be thinking “Yeah, right.” I will tell you - Yes, he’s right. Smoky pancetta and pecorino skirt overwhelming your senses when combined with a blunting mozzarella and counterpoint flavors of fresh garlic and subtly bitter brussels sprout leaves. And again, that crust!
Best of all, Motorino does great pizza without great fuss. Okay, it’s not a greasy slice to be folded in half, eaten at 2am on the the sidewalks of NYC. Sure, there is some yuppifying/hipsterish stuff going on here (seasonal ingredients, hipster clientele in the East Village and Brooklyn). But for the most part the digs lack pretension, the most ornate feature being an intricately pressed-tin ceiling, and the pizza quality matches what you’d expect from the moderately-priced menu. Sometimes you just want to sit down proper for a damn good pie, and for those times Motorino fits the bill.
